The Big E Fair!

Sorry I haven’t been posting as much!  There have been BIG things happening over here!  Hopefully I can share some of them with you after the dust settles a little!

In the meantime, I thought I’d share a few pictures.  The hubby and I took Alivia to the fair this past weekend!  Despite the horrific stand still traffic, 3 1/2 hour car ride, crowded fair grounds, and cranky over tired children (Alivia and her friend Mackenzie), we had a good time!  It’s amazing how expensive one day out can be!  They really soak you at these fairs.  Between admission tickets, carnival ride tickets, parking, food, etc., we have barely anything left in our pockets!  The poor hubby’s going to have to do an overtime just to make up for the money we spent!  No, I’m just kiddin’ sort of.

The Missing Link – Week 23

Have you ever felt like something was missing from your life? Well, it could just be one of the links below. Hence my post title! You may ask yourself "Is she serious"? Well the answer is "No, I'm definitely NOT serious”. I'm just feeling silly. Seriously though, I thought I'd share some of my favorite links with you in an effort to spread the love. What's better is that I thought I'd make this post a weekly thang! No that isn't a typo. I told you I was feeling silly. So the links below may not complete your life, but I'm hoping they, in some way, add to it. I separated them into categories for easy navigation. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.

Where did the weekend go?

I hope everyone had a wonderful Labor Day weekend!  I had quite an eventful one!  The hubby and I took Alivia to York’s Wild Kingdom in York, ME with her Auntie Nancy, Uncle Erik, and friend Mackenzie on Saturday, Auntie Gina’s on Sunday, and Nana’s on Monday!  By Monday afternoon, Livi* was asking for nothing more than to go home.  I’ve noticed that as much as Livi enjoys getting out of the house and socializing that she gets over stimulated after awhile and wants to be left alone.  Oh the tribulations of being an only child!  Poor baby!  I don’t blame her though, her mama is the same way!  With that said, we took her home and she relaxed with Daddy for the rest of the day while I went to the mall with my mom and started Livi’s Fall shopping!  I say started because I still have shoes, outwear, and some hair accessories to purchase.  Lucky for me I love shopping (I sort of have a serious shopping problem addiction) or I might find this to be overwhelming! 

Alivia’s Birthday – Part 1

We’ll call this post Part 1 since my laptop apparently can’t handle editing RAW files.  I’m hoping to be able to process the rest of my sister’s pictures when I get my new Macbook Pro in a couple weeks! 

So these pictures, like I mentioned in Monday’s post, were taken by my sister so don’t fall off your seat or anything but, yeah, I’m actually in them!  I was having such a great time processing these pictures until my computer would randomly shut down when I opened a RAW file.  It was ridiculous!  You can imagine how long it took me just to process these ones that I’ve attached here. 

Software Price Comparison & Mackenzie’s Birthday Bash!

First, for those that are here to view pictures of Mackenzie’s birthday bash, feel free to scroll right down pass my ramblings!

If you’ve been following me, you’ll know that I purchased the Macbook Pro with Retina Display last week!  I made a trip to Best Buy this weekend to check out the prices of Photoshop CS6, Lightroom 4, and Office Home & Student.  I started a price comparison at home and found Amazon to be the least amount for all three programs.  Even though Adobe was offering $50 off when you buy two software programs together, Amazon was still the cheapest.  I thought I’d share my price comparison information with you in case any of you were in the market for the same programs.

New Pics... Weekend Fun

We lucked out this weekend.  The weather was beautiful so we took advantage!  We packed up the car and took Alivia to see her Uncle Erik, Auntie Nancy and Mackenzie.  We spent most of the day outside in their yard soaking up the sun.  It's funny, but usually I get more pictures of Mackenzie than I do Alivia.  Mackenzie is a little older and will pose for the camera which is a refreshing change from running around trying to get candids of a rapidly moving toddler.  This time, however, she was more interested in playing with Alivia than posing for her Auntie so I ended up with only a handful of pictures.  Little did I know that later I would come to realize that my camera settings may have been perfect to take pictures of Alivia, but not so much of Mackenzie.  Where Alivia's skin seemed properly exposed, parts of Mackenzie's skin (mostly of her face) were over exposed and blown out.  Makes sense since Mackenzie is a few skin shades lighter than Alivia.  I can't help being disappointed but I know there will be many other opportunities to take pictures of her smiling face in the future!  Besides, I've gotten some amazing shots of Mackenzie in the past that I've posted on my site.  Anyhow, I attached the four pictures of Mackenzie at the very bottom of this post.

On a different note, I'm really excited to share the animated GIF of Alivia going down the slide.  I took a series of pictures (click after click) of Alivia going down the slide.  I then uploaded them to Glickr and it creates the html code for you to copy and paste into your post.  My only complaint is that within the conversion from JPEG to GIF, the quality of your image suffers tremendously.  You can't see it badly in my attachment because I opted to keep it only 300 px wide.  If you choose to increase the size, the worse the image appears.  Sort of a bummer, I know, but still fun!  I'll have to do some research to find the best animated GIF creator.  I'll be sure to share my results in a future post!

Quarterly Top 5 Photos - Quarter 1

This is my first time linking up to the Quarterly Top 5 Photos.  If you'd like to join in, you can link up over at Sarah Halstead, Ramblings and Photos, or Click Pray Love.  This was a challenge for me, trying to choose only 5 favorites from the last three months. 

New Pics... More Mackenzie

These pictures were taken awhile back but I never had a chance to post them.  I love taking pictures of Mackenzie!  She photographs so well!  I'm really loving the purple too.  It compliments her coloring.  What else can I tell you about Mackenzie?  She is super bright, silly (as you can see), well mannered, spirited, loving, and a great friend to Livvy!  She also has a birthday coming up!  Only 4 more months and she'll be turning the BIG 3!  Did I mention she has the cutest little munchkin voice ever?  And her parents?  What can I say?  They are just about the coolest people you will ever meet.  Her mom and I have been friends for over 30 years, since I was 5!  These are not the first set of pictures I've posted of Mackenzie and they certainly will not be the last!  Hope you enjoy them.

Also, for those of you interested, I used Paint the Moon's vintage frames.  I liked them so much that I decided to update my blog header!

New Pics... A little dirt never hurt anyone

Here are pictures from last weekend.  We spent most of it at the park.  As much as Livvy loves to walk, I was having some difficulties trying to get her to walk on anything other than our hardwood floors at home.  She'd walk on pavement, but any imperfection in the road would provoke tears.  Seriously, it was more than reluctance.  We were determined to get her to walk on the grass, mulch, imperfect pavings, etc. so we spent a good portion of our Saturday and Sunday afternoons just walking around.  Her daddy stayed strong through her desperate cries to be picked up and his persistence was exactly what the doctor ordered.  By the end of Saturday, she had walked the entire Benson's park grounds.  By Sunday she was leading the way, and with smiles and giggles to boot!  Although still apprehensive of dirt/mud, at least now she understands she can walk around it. 

New Pics (Week 10)... Labor Day Weekend

So let's see.  What did we do this past Labor Day weekend?  I'm actually asking myself this question because we were non-stop from Friday morning right up until the evening of Monday that I'm finding it a little difficult to remember everything!  First of all, it was an extra long weekend for us.  My husband took Friday off and then of course had Monday (Labor Day), so an entire four days to spend with each other was exciting!  My husband, Bob, got to spend a lot of time with Livvy!  I think they both missed each other a little extra when Tuesday came around after being so close the past four days.  When Livvy woke in the morning and I was changing her first diaper of the day she said Dada.  It was the cutest thing! 

I feel the need to share

I love Touch Up Tuesdays at Paper Heart Camera almost as much as I love this picture!  This is my baby just a little under exposed :o(  After adjusting the exposure, using an eye brightening tool, and removing the lines under her eyes in Picnik, I added a Dancing Light action and cool texture that I purchased from Paint the Moon.  I love that the textures I purchased came with an action to remove texture off the skin.  It's absolutely brilliant and I'm sure I'll master the technique with a little practice.  Not too shabby for my first time applying textures in PhotoShop Elements though!

Another day, another challenge...

This is my submission for the "Your best shot of a child" photo challenge over at The Paper Mama. 

MAC-A-DOODLE-DOO!

I had one of my best friends over today and she has a 2 year old little girl named Mackenzie.  Well she'll be 2 years in another month!  She is the cutest little red head you ever did see.  She has beautiful pale angelic-like skin and her eyes, well, speak for themselves!  Thanks to Auntie Nancy Pants and Uncle Erik for letting me post these on my site!